Reinforcement & Ascension

As you progress further in the land of Lordran, the enemies and challenges put before you will become increasingly difficult to overcome. In order to cut down your enemies with ease, leveling your character won’t be enough, uprgrading your arsenal will be required.

In Dark Souls upgrading can imply two things : reinforcement and ascension. Reinforcing merely means strengthening the item, no more, no less. Whereas ascending produces a change in the properties of an item, but before you can ascend you have to reinforce. So even if you are accomplishing two different acts, you are essentially doing one.

Reinforcement

In order to reinforce your equipment, you will require three things : an armor smithbox or weapon smithbox (depending on what you want to reinforce) or a blacksmith, the required titanite and the required amount of souls needed to reinforce (this can range from 100 to 10000 souls). The soul count for reinforcement doesn’t change, wether or not you or a blacksmith does the job. Depending on the nature of the item you are reinforcing, the type and quantity of titanite will differ. When you can no longer reinforce an item it is ready for ascension.

Ascension

Ascension can only be accomplished by a blacksmith. In order to ascend an item, you will require : the correct ember, the proper type of titanite and the required amount of souls. Embers permit the ascension process of different properties, such as divine ascension, chaos ascension, crystal ascension and enchanted ascension, each giving it’s own properties to the ascended item. Depending on which blacksmith you bring the item to, the ascension options will differ. Blacksmith Andrei will ascend standard items into divine and occult, as well as offering standard ascension, Rickert of Vinheim will ascend standard equipment to magic and enchanted, Blacksmith Vamos will ascend your items to fire and chaos status and the Giant Blacksmith will ascend your arsenal into lightning and crystal form, as well as offering special ascensions.

Shields

Just like weapons, shields can be reinforced and ascended, gaining similar properties in the process. When a shield is reinforced, it’s stability is raised, a higher stability results in a greater chance of staying on your feet from great blows. When a shield is ascended and reinforced with a secondary property, not only will it inflict secondary damage, but will also progressively become immune to attacks of that property.

Armor

Only reinforcement is possible on armor, though each item can be reinforced to a maximum of +15 (the only exceptions are for unique armor sets). Each reinforcement augments Defensive stats, both physical and magical, as well as possibly enhancing defense for one or more of the resistances.

Unique and Boss Items

Unique items can only be reinforced by twinkling titanite, which is extremely rare, and cannot be ascended. Boss items can only be reinforced with demon titanite, which is moderately rare, and cannot be ascended either.